


Nothing Left in Store

by Fluterbev



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Het, M/M, Other, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-03
Updated: 2010-10-03
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluterbev/pseuds/Fluterbev
Summary: Blair's out of options, and only has one place to go.





	Nothing Left in Store

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Elaine, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Artifact Storage Room 3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Artifact_Storage_Room_3) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Artifact Storage Room 3’s collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/artifactstorageroom3/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Written for the _'Store'_ challenge at [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sentinel_thurs/profile)[](http://www.livejournal.com/users/sentinel_thurs/)**sentinel_thurs**. This story follows on from _Fathers' Day_ , _Routine_ , and _Late at Night on the Open Road, Speeding Like a Man on the Run_.

He’d booked the trip at extremely short notice, taking whatever last-minute seats were available that would eventually get him to his destination, however circuitous the route. Consequently, after enduring three flights in the span of nearly fifty tedious hours (many of which were spent sitting around in airports waiting), Blair finally landed in Cascade. A little over an hour after that, unwashed, unshaved and so sleep-deprived he hardly knew which way was up, he finally parked his rental car outside 852 Prospect.

Blair’s palms were clammy as the engine ticked into silence, his breath held as though he was on the brink of a precipice. He knew that he only had to turn his head to see the building where he used to live; the building which housed the apartment that Naomi and Jim had made their marital home for the past five years. At this apex of his impulsive return, however, whatever store of determination had helped propel him back along this path had now deserted him so that, right at this moment, Blair truly had no idea what the hell he was doing here.

As he sat there lost in indecision, Blair registered the moment that a black sedan slid into the vacant lot beside him. The familiar driver who got out and clamped an unlit cigar between his lips compounded his surreal sense of having travelled not only back across the ocean, but also back in time.

Unthinkingly – because if he’d taken even one second to consider it he wouldn’t have done so – Blair opened the car door and got out, intercepting the man before he could cross the street. “Hey, Simon! Simon, wait up!”

Simon Banks turned and fixed Blair with a hostile stare, which halted him in his tracks. “Sandburg,” Simon acknowledged, entirely without warmth. “What a surprise.”  
  
So, Simon wasn’t pleased to see him. Which, Blair supposed, was only fair since, when he’d left, he’d cut Simon off without a word. It had been, he was forced to acknowledge, a shitty thing to do to a friend who’d gone above and beyond to try to help him salvage something positive from the mess he’d created.

“How’ve you been?” Blair tried lamely, attempting to remember how to make small talk, and hoping that he could breach Simon’s frostiness with the judicious application of bland social niceties. When he got no answer, Blair nodded in the direction of Jim’s apartment block. “I, uh, I guess you’re heading up to see Jim, huh?”

“Jim isn’t there,” Simon said bluntly.

“Oh, okay.” Jetlagged and stressed, not to mention thrown off balance by Simon’s obvious hostility, Blair didn’t know what else to say. He wiped a hand over his face, feeling the stiffness of bristles, the rankness of sweat. He was suddenly aware of how profoundly exhausted he was, and he had no idea what to do next.

Maybe Simon picked up somehow on the fact that he was struggling, because his manner thawed slightly. “Look,” he said, “let’s go inside. I think you and I should talk.”

“Inside?” Blair blinked stupidly. “Inside, you mean there?” he indicated Jim’s building. “I thought you said Jim wasn’t home.”

“He isn’t.” Simon sighed impatiently. “Look, just come with me, Sandburg. I’ll explain when we get up to the loft.” And without waiting for an answer Simon strode across the road, forcing Blair, after an indecisive few moments, to scurry quickly after him.

It was only once Blair was inside and following up the stairs in Simon’s wake that he realized what he was doing and where he was heading. He called ahead up the steps, trying to get Simon’s attention. “Hey, man, I’m not sure this is a good idea.” He took the next few steps at a jog, trying to catch up with the other man’s long-legged stride. “I mean, I don’t think me going into the loft while Jim is out, before I’ve even told him I’m here, is something he’ll approve of, you know? We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

But Simon didn’t acknowledge Blair’s protest at all, and he didn’t stop. He reached the top of the stairs and headed straight to the door of apartment 852 and unlocked it. Giving Blair one single, unfathomable glance he went inside, leaving the door open behind him.

Left alone outside in the hall Blair swallowed nervously, his heart beating triple time. Then, with no alternative other than turning tail and running – and wasn’t he here because he was utterly sick of running? - he unwillingly followed Simon inside.

Naomi’s influence on the decor was obvious immediately. The incontrovertible evidence of their marriage warped Blair’s intimate memory of the loft, transforming it into something half-familiar, half-unfamiliar; both homely and unwelcoming at the same time. It was both exactly how he remembered it, and exactly how he’d dreaded it would be.

Tearing his gaze with an effort from the feng shui aligned furniture and batik wall hangings, Blair located Simon by the sound of movement up in the loft bedroom – drawers opening and closing, the rustle of cloth - before he came back down the stairs, a neat pile of folded clothes in his hands which he placed on the kitchen table. “What’s going on, man?” Blair asked, unable to fathom what Simon was doing in Jim’s personal space.

Simon had disappeared now into the bathroom. After a couple of minutes he emerged, a wash bag in his hand, and finally answered Blair’s question. “I’m packing up some clothes and other things for Jim.”

“Why?” Blair asked, a sense of something terribly wrong beginning to take root inside him. “Is Jim okay?”

Simon placed the bag down alongside the clothes, then turned to face Blair. “Considering he almost put a bullet in his head six days ago, he’s doing just fine.”

Simon’s dispassionate words shocked through Blair. “That’s a figure of speech, right?” he said, feeling strangely disassociated. “I mean, he didn’t really try to do that, did he?”

He had barely finished speaking when Simon strode over, and came to a stop intimidatingly close. The big man towered over him, his expression furious. “Six days ago, Jim sank a whole bottle of Jim Beam, and sat here all night with a loaded gun in his hand. And I thank God that by the time the sun came up he had the sense to reach out and call on me for help, before he pulled the goddamn trigger. Because you know what, Sandburg? He’s got one good friend in this world, and it sure as hell ain’t _you_.”

Blair reeled in shock. The thought of Jim that desperate, that broken, was something that just did not compute. “But he wouldn’t have done it, right?” he objected. “Man, that’s... I mean, I know he and my… I know Jim and Naomi broke up, but...” he was babbling now, uttering two names in the same sentence that he had never, in the whole of the last five years, voiced out loud to anyone else but Jim. Stopping the flow of words with an effort, he pleaded, “He’s okay now though, right?”

Simon folded his arms, staring him down. “No thanks to you,”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Blair was confused and hurt by Simon’s obvious anger towards him, feeling increasingly like this whole scenario was some kind of bizarre nightmare. Yet deep inside he knew, of course. He knew exactly what might have pushed Jim over the edge; had gotten satisfaction out of being the one to do the pushing, in fact, _exactly_ six nights ago on the phone. Yet for propriety’s sake, for the sake of keeping their dirty little secret, he now had to maintain an attitude of plausible denial. “You’re blaming me? How is this my fault? I haven’t seen Jim for five years,” he shifted into a more reasonable tone of voice, long-accustomed to faking it despite the guilt and horror which clawed at his gut. “Come on, Simon. The man has just broken up with his wife! It stands to reason he’s feeling a little down.”

“You’re some piece of work, you know that?” Simon shook his head, an unpleasant smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Then Blair reflexively stepped back as a finger was jabbed hard in his chest. “You called him that night to vent your goddamn spleen, and I _know_ it wasn’t the first time. But _this_ time you were kicking him when he was truly down, and you made him believe he had nothing left to live for.” Simon came closer, his voice no less menacing for all that it took on a conspiratorial tone. “He told me everything, Blair. About how he was in love with you, but that you ended your relationship. About how, when he eventually got over your break-up and fell in love with Naomi, you turned your back on the both of them. And about how, in all the years since, you’ve never stopped harassing him.”

Simon’s interpretation was so far from the truth that Blair actually almost laughed, but instead misery choked him – because if Simon was saying these things, then it could only be because Jim had framed it in that way. “You have gotten it so wrong, man. I broke up with Jim because of what happened with Alex, but I never stopped loving him. And when he and Naomi got together, I did the best thing I could for all of us – I got out of their hair.” His voice broke a little, the sadness and loneliness he’d lived with for so long rushing through him like a wave. “And if you had any idea what it’s been like for me these past few years, cutting myself off like that from everyone I ever loved… god, Simon, I swear…”

Simon cut him off. “Oh for Christ’s sake, Blair, give it a rest. Do I look like Dr. Phil to you? You ended it, he found someone else, the end. Leave the man alone, and get over it!”

“Hey, forget Dr. Phil, I always thought this whole thing was more appropriate for Jerry Springer,” Blair retorted belligerently, his mood morphing in a millisecond to antagonism in the face of Simon’s callousness. “I mean, can’t you picture it, man? ‘My gay cop, ex-lover married my mom’. Pretty neat story, huh?”

“You’re sick,” Simon said with disgust. He turned away. “I can’t even look at you anymore.”

“I never figured you for a homophobe, Simon,” Blair said, hurt and indignance at Simon’s dismissive attitude making him brutal. “And hey, if you think I’m sick, what about your good pal Jim, huh? He’s the one who fucked both me and my mom.”

After a few moments of stunned silence, during which Blair was tempted to walk out of the door without another word, Simon turned back to look at him. To Blair’s astonishment Simon was regarding him not with revulsion at his crudity, but with a dreadful kind of pity. “Jim told me you were like this now,” Simon told him, his voice disconcertingly gentle. “Bitter and damaged, and that you’d go on the attack before you’d let anyone get close to you.”

“Yeah, well,” Blair pointed out resentfully. “Forgive me for stating the obvious here, but you started it, man. And you already made it crystal clear that you don’t care about my problems, so quit it with the fake concern, all right?”

Simon sighed hugely. “What happened, Blair?” he pleaded. “You and I used to be friends. You and Jim used to be more than friends, and you and Naomi had the sort of mother-son bond most people only dream of. Where did it go so wrong?”

Blair held out his hands in surrender. “Why are you asking me, if Jim already told you his version? You already believe I’m the bad guy, right?”

“I’m asking you,” Simon said, “because I have no idea what else to do. Because I need to understand your side of the story if I’m going to help my friend – to help _both_ my friends – put this thing right.”

Blair could hear the words, and detect the allusion to continued friendship, but he couldn’t feel the truth of it – he was no longer able to feel anything at all, apart from a sense of exhausted futility. “It’s too late,” he responded, the desperate store of energy which had sustained him during his journey now completely used up. “There’s no cure for this. Not for any of it. There never was.” He blinked rapidly, his vision blurred. “I shouldn’t have come here,” he said. He turned and started toward the door, his steps leaden because he had absolutely nowhere to go.

“So you’re gonna run again, huh?” The disgust was back in Simon’s voice as Blair moved away. “Why am I not surprised? You drive Jim almost to suicide, and you don’t even have the balls to stick around and see this thing through.”

That outright accusation – that Blair was the explicit reason Jim had almost taken his own life – wounded him far more than anything else Simon had said during this brief, excruciating encounter. Blair whirled around, his hands clenched into fists, hurting so much he thought he might die. “What the hell do you want from me?” he demanded, his voice breaking, guilt and grief overflowing, leaving no room even for shame.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” Simon said; calm, cool, efficient, and ruthlessly cutting a clear path through Blair’s anguish. “Right now, I want you to pull yourself together. Then I want you to check into a hotel, get cleaned up, eat, and get some sleep. I’ll come over tomorrow to where you’re staying, and you and I are going to talk. Or rather, you’re going to talk, and I’m going to listen.”

The only part of that plan that Blair had no problem with was the part where he got to hide away in the oblivion of sleep, but he was too dispirited, too dog-tired and too out of options to protest right now about anything else. So, instead, he spent a few minutes consciously attempting to put the first part of Simon’s directive in action, hoping that, once he’d gotten himself under control, dredging up the strength to deal with the rest of it would somehow follow.

But before he got his emotions even halfway in check, it became clear to both of them that any further effort was beyond him. He didn’t resist, therefore, when Simon took him firmly by the arm, and steered him out of the loft.

 

End


End file.
